Characters:   Lanyer, herself, as well as her sequence of patrons, the most important of which are Anne Clifford and her mother, Lady Margaret, Dowager Countess of Montgomery.  Other significant biblical characters include Eve, Pontius Pilate's wife, and a sequence of female heroines who at various times save the Jewish people from oppression.  

Plot Summary: Lanyer engages her powerful aristocratic women-patrons in a dialogue about women's historical reputation and capacity for creative excellence that reaches from Genesis to her own recent farewell to the estate (Cookham or "Cooke-ham") where she learned to think of herself as a poet with world-class aspirations.  She is not unmarked by her past, and it shows in her insistent appeals to aristocratic authority in terms we might compare to Sappho's invocation of the gods.   Their generosity and protection rescued Lanyer's avid, curious, sensitive mind from a difficult life serving as wife to a  minor courtier in a loveless marriage.   For more on Lanyer's biography, click here.  Unless you understand her background, her motivation for writing the poem may seem hard to understand.

        The body of the poem is divided into sections corresponding to the stages of the Passion, interspersed with Lanyer's comments to her primary patron, Margaret, Countess Dowager of Cumberland.   For students who find the Elizabethan spelling and complex stanza structure slow going, please concentrate on her most daring attempts to reinterpret the male-authored views of women.  For a list of key passages and some help navigating the archive text, click here.   (STRONGLY RECOMMENDED FOR NON-ENGLISH-MAJORS!)

Issues and general research sources:

1) Early in the poem, Lanyer swerves between praise of the Countess of Cumberland as beautiful and wise woman, and praise of Jesus as a fair and powerful ruler. She even asks "Pardon" (l. 145) for slipping from one purpose to another, but is this accidental? Remember she’s a literate poet and has plenty of time to edit her work should she lose her train of thought. What is the effect of this kind of slippage and do you see it elsewhere in her work serving the same purpose?

2) When returning to the Countess’s current situation, Lanyer points out that she is "from the Court to the Countre . . . retir’d" and has left "the world," "That great Enchantresse of weake mindes admir’d" (161-3). This is not the first time we’ve seen "retired" women, like Julian of Norwich in her cell or Sappho in exile from Lesbos, but their circumstances were not entirely self-willed. The intellectual retirement from the world becomes a great theme among women writers for the next hundred years or more, and among a few of the males, as well. What is this "world" which is left behind (i.e., not "Earth" so much as a society) and why is it dangerous? What are the ideal features of the "retirement place" according to Lanyer’s view of it, and how might it have affected John Goucher’s decision to move the Baltimore Women’s College to the hillside farmlands of Towson? What is gained and what is lost by that kind of choice?

3) When using the popular trope of "Beauty" to praise the Countess, Lanyer rejects the popular use of Beauty to measure external qualities and advocates "faire Virtues" (189) instead. How does this affect women readers raised on a diet of Marie’s Breton lais and the sonnets of male poets? As in the case of her advice about retirement, Lanyer’s advice is both practical and impractical. What do you think about the "beauty code" of her time or our own? Can we reject it? Note especially how this affects Lanyer’s reading of the "Helen" theme—how would you compare it to Sappho’s (in Rayor #8) and what does that mean?

4) This topic begins one of Lanyer’s typical renaissance humanist compositional strategies, the list of biblical and classical figures whose deeds are reinterpreted in the context of her argument about beauty’s dangers and powers (209-48). Any of these cases would reward investigation to see how unusual Lanyer’s treatment of the tale really is, but for a well-known example, take Shakespeare’s version of Antony and Ceopatra, probably Lanyer’s referent for ll. 213-224. If you know the play, how does Lanyer read Antony’s passion and Cleopatra’s death in ways which suggest she has women’s position in mind? Think about the "title" issue in Marie and compare how Lanyer alters the dramatic emphasis of her analysis of these famous tales by shifting our attention from one character to another.

5) Lanyer’s return to the Countess’s dedication in two stanzas performs a gymnastic feat that could support a decent critical article’s analysis. She moves from Lucifer’s fall through Adam and Eve’s, through a 5-line summation of the Passion which takes Jesus’ life, and sets up a view of the Countess’ soul married to God and "Dowager" heiress after the Crucifixion. The strategy prefigures what she’s about to attempt in the rest of the poem, nothing less than re-writing biblical history from a woman’s point of view. How does this mini-dedication situate her patron in the audience for this performance?

6) In lines 265-328, Lanyer invokes her Muse in a fashion we haven’t seen since Sappho and her sisters in pagan times. The "flight" of the muse beyond previous poets’ limits metaphorically describes the poem’s anticipated scope and goals. Compare the introduction of John Milton’s Paradise Lost, Book 1, for what might be the male answer to and adaptation of Lanyer’s strategy. Does the similar language support the argument Milton knew of and was attempting to overcome Lanyer’s poem? (Could anything else account for the similarities?) Also see the canceled introduction to Anne Finch’s Miscellany for what is undoubtedly the post-Miltonic reaction of the next generation of women poets. What are they fighting over here and what are the stakes?

7) How does Lanyer’s invocation of divine inspiration differ from Julian’s description of it, and what does this do to the relationship among poet, subject, and audience? Do male English poets before Lanyer ever do the same thing?

8) Lanyer’s story of the Passion begins the night before Jesus’ betrayal by Judas and follows him through his denunciation before Pilate’s court. Given Lanyer’s previous statements about "the world" and its tendencies, how does this treatment shape the story to make her readers’ view of their own court? Think of the disciples’ responses as becoming "types" of courtly friends, the one who protests he never could betray you, the inner circle to whom you reveal your worst fears, and the ultimate isolation of the accused before the "Will" of the sovereign’s absolute power, before which all those friends fall away. How does this affect her readers’ understanding of this ancient story?

9) A historian has argued that Lanyer’s father, Baptist Bassano, was descended from Italian Jews from the silk-making eastern Italian town of Bassano del Grappo (Roger Prior, "More (Moor? Moro?) Light on the Dark Lady," Financial Times, October 10, 1987, 17). Her father’s given name is a common symbolic recognition of one’s conversion from another religion to Christianity by baptism. Apart from the article’s attempt to support the now largely discredited A. L. Rowse thesis that Lanyer is the "Dark Lady" of Shakespeare’s sonnets, this evidence raises a far more important issue for a woman writing a poem about the Crucifixion of Jesus. Renaissance Christian poets tended to follow medieval poets in portraying the Jews as proud, foolish, corrupt, cruel, and even demonic in their treatment of Jesus. Meditation on the Passion’s suffering was central to many medieval people’s meditative practices.

How does Lanyer’s poem give you insight to her personal feelings about being a woman of Jewish descent writing for a Christian audience about events which draw upon both Jewish and Christian tradition? Especially, when she names "our Saviour" and addresses "these Jewes" whose "learned ignorance" gives them control of "Zeale, Lawes, Religion," how might she understand her identification with the "Saviour"’s passive humility in the presence of the power structure that condemned him (546, 548)? See also 681-88. What kind of Jewish identity might be represented for Lanyer by Caiphas, head of the Sanhedrin and first judge of Jesus?

10) Lanyer emphasizes that night is the time when dangerous betrayals are most possible (561-84). Why might that seem so to her?

11) The transition to the court of Pontius Pilate, the Roman administrator, (721-28) changes the terms of the trial from a doctrinal dispute among the Jewish community to an issue of sedition in a Roman province. The death penalty becomes possible because the Roman emperor’s authority is at stake. How does this further explain Lanyer’s attitude toward authority, especially interpretive authority over people’s words and deeds? (Think about herself and her poem being read and judged by her readers.)

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